Posh and my daughter.

My 8-year-old son ran up the driveway today and blurted the bad news: Posh fell over. Trailing behind, my 12-year-old daughter, came up with tears in her eyes and her prized chick, Posh, cuppe

Posh.

d in her hands.

I gently touched Posh’s head, and her eyes widened, her beak opened for two quick breaths, and, almost as if on queue, she slumped. My daughter ran into the house, put the chick under a heat lamp and tried to revive
her. It was to no avail.

Posh, a beautiful fuzzy gray silkie chick, was dead, and heartbreak set in.

Posh’s grave.

As my wife held my daughter, the lifeless chick still in her hands, I went out back with a shovel and dug a hole that my 8-year-old son carefully excavated. My daughter came out and laid Posh’s body in the ground, and we held an impromptu service filled with tears. I shoveled the rich dirt into the grave and laid a makeshift headstone on top. The old words came to mind:

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

That may seem to be a bit much for a baby chicken, but not at the moment. The value of Posh’s life could be found in the value my children placed in it.

Among a brood of chicks, Posh stood out. My daughter chose the chick, hoping to show it someday, and Posh seemed to choose my daughter. Inside the house, the newborn chick sat peacefully in my daughter’s hands for as long as my daughter would allow. And on their excursions to the yard, Posh sat in my daughter’s shadow; if my daughter moved, she furiously chased after her.

So, Tuesday afternoon, there were tears. To my children, the life of this chick mattered.

Wading through the questions of life and death that the children raised, my wife told the children this: “Death is fair, the timing isn’t.”

More questions, more answers: Death is fair in that it comes to everyone and, in one sense, makes us all equal. It’s unfair because we don’t know when it will come and some die young, while others live for decades.

But beyond that, what matters is not so much the “when” in life as is the “how.” How do we value life while we have it? How do we value the lives of others?

Often, not well.

I’ve known people who will pamper their pets yet easily curse other humans, and I’ve known so-called champions of human rights who will vilify their opponents with vile names and labels.

Yet I watched the two children over the course of Posh’s short life teach me a lesson: They loved the chick because the chick mattered, and the chick mattered because she was alive.

I went outside to the fresh grave, and I wondered: How can such a simple truth be so hard for adults to grasp?

I looked down and felt a tear in my eye, not necessarily for Posh, but for my children and all of us who fail to understand their lesson.